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Oliver Furlong Poem
A ventured stroll away from talk
taking in all superfluous detail
allowing it to fill my corrupted senses
an escape from the tedium
it invites me to escape from the routine.
To open new ways of perceiving
at what has been seen before
yet never revealed afore.
Rarely a moment goes by
when the same view cannot take on a new hue
for the view is alive
pumping subtle life
into each crook and cranny
so that every microcosmic detail
the tiniest of other earthly intelligence
are also offered the opportunity
the same that we are given
to flourish
of making a worthy society.
Beneath our very feet
subtle signs are there
for us to perceive if only
our eyes are able to notice.
Cracks and fissures around
infrastructures hardened textures
allow glimpses of those forces
not insubordinate
just seeking a share of living space
to echo their colourful vibrations
on our un-perceiving attentions.
An eye so keen to accept such notices
might be tempted to see
such sacred messages for us to feel or heed.
Madness may even encroach
to accept the design of such a divine creation
is at work edging around our corrosive borders.
Behind the corporal language
a communication so deep and so fine
no human sense could fully comprehend.
Unless we learned to abandon
our fleshy bony vehicles for a simpler primordial state
surrender complete intimacy with all of creation.
Hearing unutterable whispers of shining comfort
through the cracks and fissures along
the pavement, striding, roaming
surging up through gutters and drains.
The unsuspecting borders between nature
and our singular self-enhancing interactions.
Life is surging,
urging us to manifest,
in joining in feeding on its royal bosom
sharing in the feast of creation
so we, in turn, will return
to nourish the elementary message
of our purest love.
Copyright © Oliver Furlong | Year Posted 2018
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Oliver Furlong Poem
Scissoring winds avenge her earthborn savagery
Branches recovering my instinct to climb,
Light penetrating my childhood woodland awe,
Crowned with delicate arcs
I spread my love of wooded substance
Praising horizons of silhouetted dawns
Rising above morning mists broad and firm,
Twisted and benevolent, cathedrals connected
Manifested in infinite complexion.
Rooted networks of wordless communication
I worshipped the earth reigning in her mythical glory
My soul born of her womb and wedded to her effigy.
She watching over communities of species, adorning dwellings,
Inhaling she collectively sighs at our detached human forms
Observing, indulging the naivety of our sobriety,
Chopping at her elementary heart.
As seasonal leaves come and go, she grows
Whilst various flavoured versions, us a people
Our blood stains the earth her roots would drink
Before our timely capacity to flourish
As rich narratives evoking ancient stories
Of fermented lives born out of the sun’s burdens
Upon etched chasms of a dark moon’s texture
In trunks of gnarly un-pliable fixtures, there we hang
Stories of our unsolicited lives upon her sacred boughs.
Copyright © Oliver Furlong | Year Posted 2018
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Oliver Furlong Poem
In such a whimsical action
a half-asleep routine
shaped disrobed and left stark naked
this vehicle, this housing, a shell
scarred skin, greying hair, bones, muscle
and more besides with plenty of stories to tell.
Awash with collected fallacious matter
amid mind obstacles and other clutter
clinging like feathered shards
decorating our ethereal bodies help slide
through the corridors of our intentions.
Standing ‘au naturel’ now in a white tiled cube
blinking up at the spewing fountainhead
still too cold to stand under
steam signaling it’s welcome
salivating over sleepy baggage
currents of memory turned on
groping dangling vegetal limbs
to the sound of clanging pipes
running, churning, rippling
warmth over fornicated folds
fingering creases and crevices
soapy belly buttons and anuses
Between a blinking downpour
Crashing thumps detonating water
gushing over a hollowed shell
ears drumming peace to a closed eye
the mouth blows out a succulent sigh.
Aaaaaahhhhh……
I leave my body now, transferred by the glistening
whispering unending warmth dissolving my corpse
floating now in the ooze of this poetical river
soaking in fragments otherworldly sensations
I float on a raft outside of time gliding on a current
completely dissolved as vaporized droplets
as liquid words transferring constantly
flowing like remorseless compassion
fluidly escaping to rivers of reeds and bullrushes
harboring wilder one-eyed otters reminding me
of the rivers running through my veins
sacred springs or murkier places.
I am a swamp of gurgling metaphoric ideas
connected to dripping pipes as portals to dreams
flowing over banks of mud with protruding shards of rust
half sunk shopping trolleys dangling with neon moss
my effluence goes beyond all wriggling life form
swimming up the sacred river to our birthright source
a wriggling newt, a tadpole or a spermlike mudskipper…..
the water is listening,
echoing our hymns through the biosphere
coursing a channel my imagination runs, whichever
But then, right then, all of a sudden
a tap fills a kettle in the kitchen,
the shower loses all its power
plugging me back
to my present shell.
Copyright © Oliver Furlong | Year Posted 2019
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Oliver Furlong Poem
By the kitchen sink my time is lost,
hovering by a random fruit fly flies by,
by a hanging holiday trinket of a glass blue-eye
foreground to the view of the Elmworth estate
before me, a window of a world unfolding,
dawn breaking beyond
to the sound of traffic.
Soft skin under a hot tap,
on with the washing,
sponge, liquid rinse and thoughts straining,
mixed in the conveyor belt of doing,
looking, feeling filtered water dripping
corroding thoughts of my own reflections
humid droplets out the corners of my strained eyes.
Cutlery clattering plates brittle like cymbals,
piercing the quiet morning,
radio spirals through mumbling boiling kettles,
swollen tea bags, woven plans of action,
thin discussions on the weather or ‘did you sleep well?’
Kids in breakfast motion, buttered toast crunch,
routine before school.
Part-remembered dream leftovers,
replenished sink, dirty bowls and plates.
A finite pause, escaping the start
of the day ahead.
Days pass, evenings draw-on,
moons wax and wane,
a stolen lifetime looking down plug-holes,
scouring off baked-on layers,
washed down drainage pipes, let fantasy unfold
so many begotten thoughts, age forgotten,
tears of solitary agony suffused joy,
sundrops raining through the window,
imbued recollection, a veil lifted
playing back impressions made, of yesterdays,
revealed poverty, where words might be
in unutterable matters of poetic form,
soul-searching at the crude metallic altar.
Copyright © Oliver Furlong | Year Posted 2018
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Oliver Furlong Poem
Let us be….
Let us be cast by winds
holding on to nothing but each other’s company
swaying this way and that,
displaying our fragile brittle states,
seasonal winds lashing us up and down,
sun baking our skin, and rain stirring our moods
waiting for the weather to bring us back together.
Beware how subtle the undercurrent;
our blood and sweat feeding that fermented material stream.
Oblivion upon which we have chastised ourselves to
and offered up our mortal bodies for more to die for.
Let us be …..
Let us be bred and reared to be unmanufactured
letting nothing come between you and I
in a sweeter harmony as unprocessed gifted spirits
unleashing natural expressions of growth.
Be ready for malevolent forces encroach, sneaking in
to exploit every inch of our personal sphere
desperate to replace any natural act, with a loaded critical saw
poised to fell us down, conspiring, preying on choices
competing to own more of our interactions
as ammunition to be sold as a privilege
towards our becoming shredded to dust.
Beware as it could be…but it doesn’t have to be
Let us be free….
For our inner forms are not mechanical or symmetrical
nor do they all conform to a system’s algorithm.
So, stop letting us be cast us against each other
as divisible targets against our communal spirited spheres.
Rather, untie the illusory exterior mask and grow flowers from buds
like trees from seeds, find abundance in correspondence.
The real image of you and I resides in joy and relief
as the ancient light is held in soil and leaf
maybe dissolved in sweeter composition
kissing and stimulating at our roots, licking
healing shared wounds as love desires.
Copyright © Oliver Furlong | Year Posted 2018
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Oliver Furlong Poem
I was young when you started stealing from me,
teasing away my freedom, corruptibly.
I despised you as soon as I recognized you,
Like I was born to be repelled by your presence.
And yet you kept returning, like you enjoyed feeding on my innocence,
both nurturing and then destroying my centre of equilibrium, inhibiting
all self confidence until I recognized myself no-longer.
And forever since, just a whiff of your scent, steals more
of that brittle state of mind, until I remember it is no longer you
but versions of your memory, remnants of a shadow-self lurking
manifesting around edges and angles in moments of reprieve.
So keen to destroy everything I took so long to build up,
yet still, I managed to contain a level of decorum around you
enough to know in your twisted forms, you couldn’t have helped yourself.
As simple as a scratch rips a tender sore
I learned to pity your talons tearing through to my bones
whilst you learned your dutiful place at keeping me in a fragile state.
Edging around each scene you created a venomous cage
whose key teases itself further from my grasp
weakening me each time I froze to perform.
I grew to almost admire at your tenacity of never giving up.
Thieving nights away from sleep
I knew enough to know it needed to come to an end
despite the poisonous capacity you fermented in my blood.
The earth weaved her spell so I would meet a reflection of my soul,
vitality reinforced, a love so pure drove me to gladly enter the cave where you dwell,
compelling your release of my grasp so I could finally grow, finally see what I was meant to be, redeemed as my own birthright dignity.
Copyright © Oliver Furlong | Year Posted 2018
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Oliver Furlong Poem
I am open
not transparent
vulnerable to the wind
caught in an exchange
of dialogues of thought
and loneliness of heart.
I am frail
not hollow
sensitive to the noise
dazzled by misunderstandings
of songs longing to be understood
a language of alien satisfaction.
I am torn
not broken
desire for a longing
but crushed by surreality
of what could be but wasn’t
in life's constant brutality.
I am open
when love calls
caught ablaze without dispute
irrational senseless devotion
rhetorical prosaic hum
a divine instinctive notion.
Copyright © Oliver Furlong | Year Posted 2018
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Oliver Furlong Poem
I know you
I keep seeing glimmers
reflections like shining angles
of your diamond soul
more often than I knew
sparking recognition
when time forgot me.
Behind that smile,
the being, the wordless eye
between the worlds
the space around your body
echoes to me a cry
that never dies.
Like a kiss
around my shapeless heart.
Our hearts swell
and our tears will melt
the lonely disposition
of what we felt
before we met
our finer selves
once again
in each other’s gaze.
Copyright © Oliver Furlong | Year Posted 2018
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Oliver Furlong Poem
Life bubbles forth in a natural magic
So blinding are the lost nights
so burning the constant tones
etching our blood with stones
Island journeys to find a maze
glorifying mind shapes on maps
Clasping moon shadows in forks
from clouds of our own deception.
In darkness a soul reaches blind
So lost in the ephemeral layer
We sit and stare what hands don’t hold
Our grasp so laden with stories untold
Imagining love as a fractured memory
Seeping through efforts a father sweats
shedding sweeter kindness on claws
In a sea of a burden bites cries of anger
held in ransom future doubt frowns.
To recognize the wounds we infected
We’re not just ours to own, but look
to what we share in sanguine hope
a story foretold in pillowed murmurs
smiling tears of joy, through effort sublime
One can’t blame the pain transferred
Let the breeze blow comfort in her wisdom
As her hand dances around a precious flower.
Copyright © Oliver Furlong | Year Posted 2019
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Oliver Furlong Poem
For all the ifs,
for all the buts
that have ever been,
may there be a full stop.
End the cycle of re-imagining
that which didn’t happen,
lets put it all behind
and look on anew
to things that might be.
When the heart longed
for what wasn’t there,
it tore the moment in two
one was real
the other was not.
The basic truth cares
for what actually is, so…
focus being on the spot,
let it deliver
that which can
and that which is.
Whatever went on behind
or, could’ve, should’ve, might’ve
mustn’t spoil the current
of taste, smell or touch
of what’s right there.
Be right here.
Copyright © Oliver Furlong | Year Posted 2018
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